


swing

by castielsass



Series: Therapy [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Bad Parenting, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Physical Abuse, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:28:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castielsass/pseuds/castielsass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i chose to make this only one part of the series so that you can skip it if you like. <br/>spoilers:<br/>in this, will's father gets drunk and whips will with a belt after reading that it could help convert a gay teen. obviously this isn't true, but will is very shaken by this, experiences a panic attack and suffers from internalized homophobia gained from his father. will is 17 in this series. please feel free to skip it if it triggers you in any way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	swing

Will slept fitfully, but he lapsed into a sleep deep enough to dream when it got dark and the owls starting hooting from the trees in the yard. He was dreaming of water, cool green fish swimming carelessly when the world got dark and his dad shook him awake.   
  
He made a confused weary noise deep in his chest and a frisson of fear came through. His lower back ached and he had to pee but he’d been afraid to ask his dad to unlock the door in the middle of the night to let him use the bathroom.   
  
His dad was large and misshapen like a shadow in the light from the hall and when Will sat up, he scooped him to his chest like a puppy. The smell of whiskey was sharp and low, stuck to his clothes like dirt.  
  
  
“What’s wrong?” Will asked and it came out hoarse and broken from sleep. His dad shushed him, holding his head to his chest and rocking him. He hummed quietly for a minute, and Will felt a quiet sickness like rejection foam up when he couldn’t tell if his dad was rocking him or swaying from the alcohol. His dad’s voice wavered between too loud in the dim room and too quiet for Will to hear with one ear pressed against his dad’s chest.   
  
A heartbeat drowned out almost everything else, and Will almost felt sleepy again, like even though he was uncomfortable he could drop back into exhaustion. But his dad’s voice was loud in the darkness again, rousing him out of bed. Will stood, his bare legs cold underneath his boxers. His tshirt reached to the top of his thighs, and Will curled a hand in the hem, scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes while he followed his dad.  
  
  
“I been reading,” His dad said, almost a whisper. The door to his dad’s bedroom creaked open and Will blinked at the light coming from the open laptop on his dad’s bed.  
  
  
“Been reading about correction,” His dad said and Will blinked at him, still drowsy and foggy with confusion. His dad gestured, whiskey making it big, and Will’s eye was caught by the brown leather belt draped over the footboard of the bed.  
  
  
“What?” Will asked. His dad was wearing sweatpants, loose around the knees but tight with age around the thighs. He didn’t need a belt.  
  
  
“Go on now and bend over that bed, grab the bar,” his dad said and Will didn’t move, blinking in bewilderment. His dad hadn’t ever really hit him before, a smack when he was out of line but he’d never been whipped.  
  
  
“Pull them boxers now and move,” his dad said again when Will didn’t.  
  
  
“I don’t wanna,” Will said. He didn’t move away though, knowing with the whiskey that this might be painful but enraging his dad would be worse. His dad seemed calm now, and maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.  
  
But if Will pissed him off, his dad would carry that fury with him through drunk and sober and he wouldn’t remember why he was angry, but he’d carry it like a cloud and know it was Will’s fault.   
  
His dad didn’t ask again, gripping Will’s upper arm tight enough to bruise and yanking him forward, pushing him over the footboard of the bed. The first blow came hard enough that Will lost his breath, his hands clenching on the metal of the footboard as the smacks came hard enough to rock him forward. Shock numbed him for a minute but his skin warmed with each land, the thin material of his boxers aggravating the skin underneath. The belt made a whistling noise when it whipped through the air and caught against his skin and any air left in Will’s body escaped in a shocked exhale. Before he knew it he was squirming forward, into the footboard to escape the belt. His dad’s breath was loud beside him as he whipped his arm forward like he was trying to smack right through Will rather than glance off him.   
  
His hips smacked forward with the next blow, his hipbones smashing painfully into the metal footboard. Tears swam in his eyes and he couldn’t catch his breath, pain in his chest superseding the burn of his ass as the inability to breath called down a panic attack. His chest heaved with air but none of it was breathable, burning hot in his lungs and escaping before he could get any good out of it. His mind seemed to recede, leaving him alone in his body, his whole frame shunting forward with every whip, panic heaving his chest and makes his knees tremble.   
  
He was suddenly, violently terrified that he was going to pee his pants, although he hadn’t since he was a child. Gasps burned his throat and even in the dimness of the room he couldn’t see, tears fuzzing everything except the bright glow of the laptop on the bed.  
  
  
“I gotta do it bare,” his dad said suddenly, stopping the blows with a gasp. “Pull down.”  
  
  
His voice was slurring but Will didn’t dare pretend he didn’t understand. His hands were shaking cold, red and indented from his grip on the footboard as he shoved his boxers down.  
  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, air bubbling in his chest painfully like he was going to die. “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry.”  
  
  
His dad grunted like he hadn’t even heard and Will closed his eyes when the ‘shoop’ of the belt whipped through the air. Something landed like a punch on his thigh, deep in the muscle and Will choked on a sob when he realised it was the belt buckle burying itself in his flesh like a thorn. Something like a pitiful screech sounded when the buckle landed again and this caught his dad’s attention.  
  
He lifted the belt and stared at the buckle like he’d never seen it before in his life. Blood trickled down Will’s thigh, hot and painfully irritating on the burning skin. His dad abruptly turned the belt around, wrapping the buckle up in his palm and Will barely had time to get his head around before the next blow landed. His thighs shook and the bundled fabric of his boxers slipped to land around his ankles and Will almost reached for them in embarrassment before he was distracted by the whip landing on the upper curve of his ass, laying a line of fire over the heated flesh.  
  
He was crying, tears dripping in a mess on the brown blanket that Will loved, sitting in a bundle at the foot of the bed. The blanket broke him and Will was reaching for it before he knew. He curled a hand in the material, soft and smelling like fish and motor oil, and it was his motion combined with the forward jump of his body when the next blow landed that cracked his nose over the edge of the footboard.   
  
Suddenly it was like the tears had swelled and Will vaguely heard himself calling for his dad, like he wasn’t the one in the room. Blood dripped into the inner corner of his eye and Will said ‘daddy I’m sorry’ and the belt fell to the floor, curling like a snake. Will knelt and yanked his boxers up, blood from his nose and backside soaking into the material and making it stick to the shaking red of his thighs.  
“Y’alright?” His dad asked and Will fell into his arms like a kid, swallowed up by the thick henley and his dad’s broad arms.  
  
“Y’alright?” He asked again and Will didn’t answer, sobbing blood and tears into the grey fabric. His dad smelled like sweat and whiskey and boat oil underneath that.  
  
  
“Y’alright,” his dad said like a confirmation when Will reached a hand up to scrub at his nose, itching and burning from the crack in the skin over the bridge of his nose.  
  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said and his dad’s hand rubbed hard over his back, clapping roughly for every three strokes.  
  
  
“Yeah y’are,” his dad said and it was the satisfaction in his voice that broke Will a little more, fracturing something delicate and small inside him.  
  
  
“I don’t think it worked,” Will said, the residual adrenaline from his panic attack making him shake violently like a weed in the wind. “I’m sorry,” he said again.  
  
“I think I got made wrong,” he said shakily, his dad’s accent thick on his own tongue.


End file.
